Saturday, October 11, 2008

Fascinating Day Of NASCAR TV On Saturday

The night race at Charlotte changes lots of things on the weekend for NASCAR fans. One of them is the TV menu. Saturday brings a rich mix of NASCAR TV programs that have been on-the-air since February and are now in full stride.

The morning starts with the 10AM version of NASCAR Now. This week, Ryan Burr is hosting the show from the ESPN2 studios and his partner Nicole Manske is reporting live from Lowe's Motor Speedway. This show has been solid all season and this is the scenario that works the best.

Burr has an extensive studio news background and was a fulltime anchor on the ESPNEWS Network. Manske hosted The SPEED Report last year, but her background is field reporting and interviews. This duo has really clicked and this high-profile show should be well worth watching.

It will be SPEED up next at 3:30PM with Tradin' Paint. Jeff Hammond from the NASCAR on Fox team will be the media guest. He will join host John Roberts and Kyle Petty for a conversation on the NASCAR issues of the week. Last Sunday, Ray Dunlap was the guest and almost blew a gasket arguing with Petty in what may have been the most interesting show of the season.

There are lots of topics for the Tradin' Paint Producer to select from this week. Tight tempers from The Chase drivers, a sour economy and the possible Chapter 11 filing by GM could well be on the agenda. This program either thrives or dives depending on the topics being discussed.

At 4PM on SPEED is NASCAR Performance. Larry McReynolds and his Producer from the NASCAR Media Group (NMG) have worked very hard to make this show a fan favorite. Chad Knaus and Bootie Barker have completely opposite personalities, yet each is in the exact same job with good results. Those two combine with McReynolds to answer viewer email and talk about the tech topics of the week.

An original creation this year is a TV series called NASCAR in a Hurry that can be seen at 4:30PM. SPEED put this show together with hosts Adam Alexander and Randy Pemberton to re-purpose the video shot by the TV crews and NMG of the racing weekend. It is an easy way to get up-to-date on the current NASCAR happenings and has been a success in its rookie season.

SPEED rolls-out the franchise at 5PM with NASCAR RaceDay. There should be a huge crowd for this live show right in the backyard of the SPEED TV Network. Host John Roberts basically spends two hours trying to corral his panelists Jimmy Spencer and Kenny Wallace. Hermie Sadler and Wendy Venturini are the reporters for this program who play a very important role in updating the stories from the infield while the SPEED Stage sits outside of the track itself.

This week, Roberts and company will be welcoming the duo in the news from last week. Tony Stewart and Regan Smith will both be live guests, no doubt reviewing the exciting finish from Talladega. Nationwide regular Brad Keselowski will also be on the program.

The NASCAR TV train moves over to ABC at 7PM for NASCAR Countdown. Allen Bestwick hosts the program from the ESPN Infield Pit Studio. As usual, Bestwick will have Rusty Wallace and Brad Daugherty on his pre-race panel. This program follows live college football, but the schedulers left enough room for this thirty minute show.

The big Sprint Cup Series night race is next at 7:30PM. This is a long and grinding race that demands a lot of energy from the TV crew and announcers. Dr. Jerry Punch, Dale Jarrett and Andy Petree worked a long day on Friday that went into early Saturday morning. The Nationwide coverage had red flags and big accidents but good coverage by the ESPN team.

On Saturday night, Tim Brewer will be in the Tech Center and ESPN will have four pit reporters. Mike Massaro, Dave Burns, Jamie Little and Shannon Spake will be hustling to try and keep up with both the stories of the race and the stories of The Chase.

One big surprise has been the strong NASCAR Now wrap-up show that follows the Cup races on ESPN2. All of the strongest parts of the NASCAR on ESPN and NASCAR Now TV resources get poured into this one hour program. On this Saturday, the program will air at 11:30PM after the race. Ryan Burr will be the host.

Unfortunately, ESPN only airs this wrap-up show during the ESPN/ABC portion of the Sprint Cup coverage. Perhaps, the program might return on a fulltime basis in 2009. Scheduled on Sunday race days at 10PM, this show sneaks-in right behind the three hour racing review shows on SPEED.

Speaking of SPEED, they are once again holding the Victory Lane program until 8PM on Sunday night. This is the middle piece of the Sunday night puzzle with The SPEED Report starting the evening at 7PM and Dave Despain and Wind Tunnel coming along as the finale at 9PM.

SPEED has a tough time scheduling Victory Lane on a Saturday night for one simple reason. There is no way to tell when the Sprint Cup race will end. As NASCAR fans who have watched live races at midnight and beyond know all too well, NASCAR likes to get the show in and move on.

NASCAR fans get to choose from almost ten hours of TV programming on Saturday alone. This diverse schedule and the featured race should be enough to satisfy any racing appetite. Well, until the next racing weekend of course.

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I thought that the Nationwide race last night was better than it had been in some time. I am still no fan of Jerry Punch in the booth, but thought the race crew in general did a much better job showing the racing as well as covering the action in the pits because Lord knows there was pelnty of it going on.

Be interesting to see how the ratings go tonight with the race going against LSU-Florida, Oklahoma St-Missouri and Penn St-Wisconsin plus the ALCS game. They better be on top of their game with the broadcast to avoid losing viewers during the race

bevo if the 2 merge it could produce some major competition for Toyota Honda etc. I,ve been a Bow Tie guy all my life but if this will keep GM going in these changing times thats good ,and hopefully keep them in NASCAR. I can't imagine no Chevys in the feild in the future.

With Craven's bona fides I can't think of a reason to bring Boris Said back. Craven ought to be used during the broadcast instead of Rusty Wallace, he's better at broadcasting and has no conflict as an owner.

He and DJ are about as good as it gets from ex-drivers.

I think we're lucky to have Burr doing the broadcasts too. He's really good at what he does and I can't help but think the brass at ESPN have taken note as well and will be moving him to higher profile assignments.

JD--Ryan mentioned on yesterdays NN that Ricky would be there all weekend...they even had a cot for him to sleep on *giggle* but not much food for him :)

I'd love to see them have VL on live regardless of what time the race ends. Then folks will have a choice. Some can stay up late and for our West Coast friends it's still early for them even if it is 2 am eastern. Or can record and watch during the day.

Thanks for the tip to google Chevy Volt. I hope it does FANTASTIC in testing and hits it's target dates. I have two musician buddies that drive Toyota prius and are VERY happy with them.

I agree VL should follow THE RACE. I am in EST and a late night person but folks can tape or DVR. And why must EVERYTHING revolve around EST? West coasters DESERVE an after show and it's earlier for them...so NASCAR needs to rethink MANY times....but I don't want to digress. ha

I apologize for being the skunk at the picnic,but you might want to dig a bit deeper into the Volt on Google. GM went on record as saying that as long as they build the first generation Volt, they will never make a dime selling the car even while selling it for between $30,000 and $40,000. Further,GM said it plans to build no more than 60,000 per year.Probably only a 1000 will be available in late 2010 if they can stay on schedule.Prius sales have maxed out at roughly 250,000 per year as a point of reference.The Prius has just broken even financially even though it was introduced in Japan in 1997 and here in either 2000 or 2002. They had been losing $2000 per car. The Prius battery used to cost $4200.Don't know what it costs today.It is NMH (Nickel Metal Hydride). This is a bad year for cars,but we'll still sell 15 million this year.Gas hybrids represent roughly 2% of new car sales.The lithium ion battery in the Volt is $10,000, weighs 400 pounds and will probably require replacement during the vehicle's life. At least one Company is exploring leasing the batteries.I agree with JD.An affordable, mass produced electric car WOULD change the world, but there are still many challenges ahead,too many to cover here.

JD i know all good things must come to an end, I was fasinated by the interal combustion engine since about the age of 5 or 6 stated building lawn mower engines around 8 or 9 and was well into cars by about 10 years old,now I have a shop for about the last 20 years. Technolgy has benn changing since i started in a shop in the mid to late seventy's. The Chevy Volt although I'm not big on change I know it's a comin, and I know that is where we are headed, I guess at this point if we can keep our auto industry going that is what wil need to be done. I have worked on a couple of toyota prius, I guess now the learning begins.

I agree with your comments on Victory Lane. I'd watch it every week if it came on the air immediately after the race network signed off. As it is now I never bother any more because everything is basically old news by the time it comes on the air (especially when it's more than 24 hours delayed for Saturday night Cup races).

I sure would like to have an extended immediate post-race show to go with the 3+ hours of immediate pre-race coverage we get every week. If Fox, TNT, and ESPN/ABC aren't going to set aside room for immediate post-race shows themselves, a live Victory Lane immediately upon the race network's sign-off would be the perfect substitute in my opinion.

The current 'norm' of 3+ hours of immediate pre-race and only 5 minutes of immediate post-race followed by NASCAR darkness all across TV for the next several hours leaves much to be desired, from my perspective.

I think getting alot of people to buy these is going to be a task , they also need to make the batteries a little more efficient.At one point I remember they where flown to different parts of the world to be manufactured, which also kind of defeats the whole saving fuel idea.But you are right JD if GM doesn't get it into gear Toyota will pass them. But I guess I'm just Old School, give me a Chevy Small Block any day